I have the problem with sorting rows by different criteria. I have games table and among others, there are rate and category columns. What i want is to select 4 most popular games from all categories, i mean 4 most popular action games, 4 strategies etc. I hope i described my problem well. SQL experts, help me please!

Thanks in advance,
Milan

I don't know what your table looks like so I can't give you an exact query but it would be something like:

SELECT * FROM `games` WHERE `genre`='action' ORDER BY `popularity` DESC LIMIT 4;

Just make a seperate query for each genre.

Ok...but i was wondering if there is any way to do this in only one query. I would like to save some server resources.

Thank you anyway.

Well, I'm not even sure mysql could do it.
You could write 1 big query for each genres, and use an UNION to link ever results together, supposedly that mysql can use an union joint.
I Don't know, I'm more used to oracle/postgres...

But seriously, php would let you go much faster to your point, and the resources used by that kind of query is like the amount of concentration you require to breath...
Almost null...

Ok, then i suppose i have to do one query for every category.

Yeah thats probably the best approach. Making multiple queries, like those, won't eat up much execution time so I wouldn't worry about that.